Kimi had driven exactly two races with other cars on the track in the last 3 years when he came back to F1 this year. Didn't seem to have hurt his racecraft much.

Hulkenberg did not race at all last year, he's done a great job this year.

Damon Hill had driven exactly 2 races the previous year when he got into the Williams in 1993.

Kovalainen also only did testing in 2006. He was fine in 2007. Maybe didn't set F1 on fire, but did beat the super experienced Giancarlo that year.

How many other examples do you need?

You don't have to agree with me.

Kimi is a once in a generation talent and not a valid example. You're really going to sit there and compare a world champion with someone who you, myself, or anyone else for that matter, cannot say definitively what his career will be? That's nonsensical to no end.;)

Damon Hill had the benefit of the best car on the grid by a country mile in 1993. But the other thing is he also finished behind Senna in the standings.

Yes and Kovalainen is on his way out of F1 altogether.

Since we're talking about Williams, do you recall Heinz-Harald Frentzen? Talk to people who saw him in Formula 3000, and they'll tell you he was extremely fast. How did that all pan out for him when you look at his career? Not quite what people envisioned out of his career when they were watching him prior to F1.

Listen, I hope Bottas is better than advertised. Call me a skeptic, I've heard too much praise dumped on guys who turned out to be ok drivers in F1, periodically capable of a really good drive, but nothing like what the hype built them up to be.

I thought Bottas was involved with Williams before Wolff was but according to Wikipedia I was wrong on that one. Whoops.

I don't rate him quite as highly as everyone else does, I have to admit. His record looks good on paper, but his F3 Euroseries campaign didn't live up to expectations when you consider he was driving for ART both seasons. GP3 did a lot to salvage his reputation, but I always thought that compared to the competition both he and Sims were really a bit too experienced to still be racing at that level - after 2 years of Euroseries the next step should have been WSbR or GP2. And even then it took him until the second half of 2011 to get it together.

But what do I know, Williams seem to think he's good. And I can't pretend that I'll miss Senna either.

His first season he finished 3rd in the standings, i don't think you'll find to many people with a better rookie season in the F3 Euro Series than that. As for his second season, the Signature cars were the cars to have that year, the ART's, for once, weren't.

His first season he finished 3rd in the standings, i don't think you'll find to many people with a better rookie season in the F3 Euro Series than that. As for his second season, the Signature cars were the cars to have that year, the ART's, for once, weren't.

Bianchi and Hulkenberg? Well, they were third too but they won races. Not that many people have had their rookie seasons with ART either, in fairness

I have to admit that I didn't follow it that closely so I probably have to defer to the better judgement of others, but my impression was always that the ART drivers could have done more in 2010. Certainly I remember his stock taking a hit and talk that GP3 was his last chance. I think I'd be more convinced by Bottas (and Sims for that matter) if he had gone on to a higher category and had a respectable rookie year instead of moving sideways and winning against teenagers (yes, slight generalization).

Although I think missing the GP2/WSR level is hardly ideal, I don't think it means he will be totally unprepared like some say though. He's been driving an F1 car for a year, it's not like he's going to be unable to handle it.

I wonder how drivers are going to get enough F1 experience without driving F1 car? Maldonado and Grosjean had as much experience from pre-F1 as you can only expect from young drivers. They couldn't really get more experience before getting an F1 drive.

There is no reason to think Bottas will be as crash-prone as Grosjean and Maldonado. His race-craft was superior in GP3 and he made almost no crashes in his all testing and FP1 in F1 car.

I struggle to undestand what is your point.

I believe the point is Williams will have Maldonado and a rookie besides him. Maldonado who has been more unstable than a rookie, 5 point finishes out of 20 races. Now he will be the team lead and in comes a rookie who will need time to develop and will naturally be more crash prone as well. So better hire some new repair mechanics too, Williams, the nights at the garage fixing cars will be long.

I believe it is a bad move. Senna had some gaps specially in qualy and not so surprising considering he has 90 minutes less of practice almost every race. But Senna did bring it on race day and has had 10 points finishes double of Maldonado. Sure, one could say Maldonado finishes were more impactful, specially with the win, so can you expect another win for Maldonado in 2013? Because without it he would probably be behind Senna now in the points standing. Anyway have fun with your drivers next season Williams

Williams had quite a few successful test drivers in the old days. So did other teams for that matter.

And really how is she qualified?

She was a DTM backmarker who scored 4 points in 7 seasons.

You know what my problem with Bottas is? There's been an influx of idiots allowed onto the grid who have not enough experience to properly drive in Formula 1. Grosjean and Maldonado were the two worst offenders of the 2012 season. Remember, everyone says both of them are fast...sort of like Bottas. I don't feel like seeing another young driver who has spatial awareness problems.

Anyone who gets Ecclestone's blessing, I wouldn't trust with my life, which is what Toto has.

The old days are long past gone. Test drivers don't do any actual testing nowadays. She's qualified because driving a car in a straight line aero tests isn't that difficult. It doesn't matter how she fared in DTM or other series.

Your comparison with Grosjean and Maldonado doesn't make any sense. Neither did take a year off racing like Bottas, both are in their second F1 season and both had several seasons in GP2. If anything, they show that experience only goes so far. But there actually is a driver on the F1 grid who hasn't raced for a year before this season, only doing some Friday practice sessions. And he doesn't seem to lack racecraft as far as i know. Your stance is pretty puzzling to me.

I believe the point is Williams will have Maldonado and a rookie besides him. Maldonado who has been more unstable than a rookie, 5 point finishes out of 20 races. Now he will be the team lead and in comes a rookie who will need time to develop and will naturally be more crash prone as well. So better hire some new repair mechanics too, Williams, the nights at the garage fixing cars will be long.

I believe it is a bad move. Senna had some gaps specially in qualy and not so surprising considering he has 90 minutes less of practice almost every race. But Senna did bring it on race day and has had 10 points finishes double of Maldonado. Sure, one could say Maldonado finishes were more impactful, specially with the win, so can you expect another win for Maldonado in 2013? Because without it he would probably be behind Senna now in the points standing. Anyway have fun with your drivers next season Williams

Honestly I don't understand why everybody thinks Bottas is going to be a crashkid. He hasn't been like Maldonado or Grosjean in the lower series and I don't think he is going to be one in the F1 either.

Bottas, as Olliek has taken the effort to summarize, has been exceptionally groomed by Williams for that seat, kudos to them for that. With the testing restrictions in place, with an ineffective, facetious 3 day young driver test 1 -2 times a season, Williams has chosen to give him time to settle into an F1 team, like no other team has. He is by far in the best position to deliver from day one as a rookie next season. furthermore, racecraft honed in GP2 is often worthless in F1. You don't have to look too far to find that to be a fact.

The bottom line is here is that Senna isn't quick enough. Steady, but not quick. He hasn't been quick enough wherever he goes. Therefore I see Bottas as a good move and will give Pastor more competition in qualifying as the season progresses of that I'm sure.

If a very good driver was being replaced by Bottas, that's a different kettle of fish - but he's replacing Bruno Senna. I think we'll get over it

I'm not sure what is better for Williams, but I want to see F1 with the most top drivers as possible, so I support changing someone that showed no potential to be a top driver for a new face. In the worse case Bottas will be bad and than they can try someone else the year after and keep doing this till they find someone that is really talented.

Honestly I don't understand why everybody thinks Bottas is going to be a crashkid. He hasn't been like Maldonado or Grosjean in the lower series and I don't think he is going to be one in the F1 either.

I think going with Bottas for 2013 is a bad decision. No race experience since 2011 isn't a good thing.

I'm not sold either on his speed. I think it's a sad day when Williams F1 takes a guy based on him being managed by a minority shareholder in the team. Runs in stark contrast with the way Frank used to run the team.

Unfortunately Senna was a pure pay driver like Maldonado is, Bottas will be the real thing just sit down and you shall see.

I'd say Bruno Lalli is pretty much a pay driver. A rich kid with mediocre talent who buys drives here and there. Every time he loses a drive he buys a new one. Using the name Senna may lower the prices somewhat.

I certainly agree. Maldonado, to some extent, Maldonado is a positive surprise for me, even though I don't like him too much. Bruno Senna was the opposite. I really thought he would show steady improvement, and would have tipped him to shine from from some point in the season. The fact that they had serious backing is not special, in fact, it is criteria. Some drivers deliver, some don't.

Bottas, as Olliek has taken the effort to summarize, has been exceptionally groomed by Williams for that seat, kudos to them for that. With the testing restrictions in place, with an ineffective, facetious 3 day young driver test 1 -2 times a season, Williams has chosen to give him time to settle into an F1 team, like no other team has. He is by far in the best position to deliver from day one as a rookie next season. furthermore, racecraft honed in GP2 is often worthless in F1. You don't have to look too far to find that to be a fact.

Williams also hasn't shown a lot of faith in drivers over the past two decades.

They've (or perhaps Frank really) was more than willing to kick a number of drivers to the curb...Damon Hill comes to mind. The BS with Alain and Nigel in 1992 was more rubbish.

What happens if Bottas underachieves? Will they toss him in 2 or 3 seasons?

I'll be honest, I do like Bruno, but I don't think he ever had any real chance of retaining his seat for 2013. It wouldn't have mattered what he did during this season as it was quite clear Bottas was going to take that 2nd seat. Even had he made Q3 100% of the time, it likely would have had no impact on the Williams decision since he was a short term solution to get an infusion of cash to the team. It worked as the car actually looked respectable this season.

The big question is, does Bottas cover most of the sponsorship dollars that Bruno brought or how much less is he bringing?

Obviously Williams has a big investment in him as it pertains to their future, but whether or not they can deliver a car for the future is another story. It's been 15 years since they last won a WCC title, and I'm not really sure they ever will be in that position again.

I'd say Bruno Lalli is pretty much a pay driver. A rich kid with mediocre talent who buys drives here and there. Every time he loses a drive he buys a new one. Using the name Senna may lower the prices somewhat.

What's your definition of pay driver?

I think it'd be fair to say he's better than plenty of illustrious pay drivers from the past...

Honestly I don't understand why everybody thinks Bottas is going to be a crashkid. He hasn't been like Maldonado or Grosjean in the lower series and I don't think he is going to be one in the F1 either.

He may not be a crash kid but rookies are more crash prone naturally and Williams will have a lead driver, Maldonado, who has been a rampant crasher for 2 seasons and he is not even a rookie. The thing that Maldonado does have is a lot of speed. I really doubt Bottas will match him in that regards or much of the grid for that matter, I criticize Maldonado in a lot of ways and If I was a team owner I would think twice about having him, but one thing you can't criticize him for is raw speed. He out qualified Barrichello in his debut season. If he wasn't so incident prone, he would be an outstanding top driver potential.

Now Bottas, let say he will probably not be as fast as Maldonado, the chance of him showing good race craft compared to Bruno is small in my view. Bruno didn't qualified well, but he often found a way to score points even when getting involved in incidents. That is not a very easy characteristic to replace specially from a rookie.

I think it'd be fair to say he's better than plenty of illustrious pay drivers from the past...

Johnny Dumfries comes to mind.

Your opinion is laced with anti-bias which is a problem.He is physiologically closely related to Ayrton Senna and for what that's worth it is probably not a hindrance and as far as psychological motivation is concerned the boy must be more determined than anyone to make it in F1 because of who he is.He is highly intelligent, under-experienced and capable of very surprising speed. Just to throw you off your one track mind.I'm not a Senna defender but I'm certainly well up for killing off bias trolls without a constructive opinion.

I think it'd be fair to say he's better than plenty of illustrious pay drivers from the past...

Johnny Dumfries comes to mind.

Johnny Dumfries the Le Mans winner? Good driver, who almost proved Ayrton's point in a way. Lotus couldn't run two front-running cars at the time, so getting someone steady but understanding of his position in the field was right.

Ability wise, he won the British F3 Championship the year after Ayrton without trying to run his opponents off the road and was signed as a Ferrari test driver for 1985 so Enzo must've seen something there.

As regards 1987, he'd been effectively sabotaged during 1986 by his team mate who'd been trying to get his mate Gugelmin into Lotus for the season and F1 being what it is, was off the radar as far as drives were concerned. I'm not saying he was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but don't think your criticism of him is entirely warranted, especially as I believe he wasn't actually a pay driver at any point during his career.

Like your moniker incidentally, much missed corner in a sea of second gear mediocrity !!

Ability wise, he won the British F3 Championship the year after Ayrton without trying to run his opponents off the road and was signed as a Ferrari test driver for 1985 so Enzo must've seen something there.

As regards 1987, he'd been effectively sabotaged during 1986 by his team mate who'd been trying to get his mate Gugelmin into Lotus for the season and F1 being what it is, was off the radar as far as drives were concerned. I'm not saying he was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but don't think your criticism of him is entirely warranted, especially as I believe he wasn't actually a pay driver at any point during his career.

Like your moniker incidentally, much missed corner in a sea of second gear mediocrity !!

I always saw the block on Derek Warwick as a crap move. I think the 1986 Lotus team would have been really something had Senna driven with Derek. I know at the time, or perhaps with a team like Lotus, getting an identical setup was difficult. But, I always found it regrettable Elio de Angelis left because he knew he couldn't get a fair shake there. I thought Elio was a very solid driver who deserved more from Lotus, and sadly has been somewhat forgotten. It would have been interesting to see what, or if Senna would have done anything like that in today's F1 given it's easy to replicate identical setups and the like.

Thanks, and I couldn't agree more with your assessment. Average lap speeds were 200KPH in 1971!!!

I wonder how much of Bruno's natural speed is being hidden by having to jump into an entirely new environment and new car EVERY YEAR he's been in F1?

He's never really been given a chance. By the time he got into the Williams it had already been developed as a car around feedback that Rubens and Pastor had given - and I don't think Pastor is particularly tall, meaning that physically Bruno was probably quite uncomfortable in the car.

I also think he's a victim of two attitudes:

1) The Hamilton and Vettel Syndrome: ALL ROOKIES MUST BE WINNING RACES AND SUPER AWESOME IN THEIR FIRST YEAR...even if they AREN'T gift-wrapped an awesome car...

2) HE'LL NEVER BE AS GOOD AS HIS UNCLE BASHBASHBASHBASH

I think Bruno is treated a lot more harshly than other drivers with his experience/record.

I think some people in here are thinking of the wrong Senna. It's Bruno losing his ride. You know, the one that sucks.

How can Bruno Senna "suck"? Have you seen the points table? In the last 3 or 4 races seems he has come to terms with the car and it's pretty OK compared to Maldonado. In fact, he's a safer pair of hands compared to Maldo, and also has done some beautiful overtakes in this season. Also he seems to be a genuinely nice guy and a clean, fair racer... UNLIKE his famous uncle.

How can Bruno Senna "suck"? Have you seen the points table? In the last 3 or 4 races seems he has come to terms with the car and it's pretty OK compared to Maldonado. In fact, he's a safer pair of hands compared to Maldo, and also has done some beautiful overtakes in this season. Also he seems to be a genuinely nice guy and a clean, fair racer... UNLIKE his famous uncle.

He doesn't suck at all. Go Bruno!

I like Bruno too. He seems like a perfectly nice guy and usually races well. Just not quite enough pace.

Yes, I have seen the points table and Bruno has only scored 2/3 of the amount of points of what the biggest waster of points on the grid this season has in the same car.

The all thing with Bruno being "safe pair of hands" and having "good racecraft" is laughable, really. If points are given for qualifying, Pastor would've scored 123 of them this season. This really shows how much potential this car has, since it doesn't have any fundamental problem with tyres or whatever which would make it's race pace significantly worse than qualifying pace. Pastor would've make more than 100 points this season if he had managed to stay out of the trouble, despite being hampered by plenty of reliability problems just when the car was good and he was doing outstanding job, like in Singapore or Abu Dhabi.Considering the circumstances, 31 points scored by Bruno is really awful job. You don't really need good racecraft or whatever to beat this (as Pastor has proven) and you expect all half-decent drivers to beat this "achievement" easily. Williams really needed to change this, because they were driving like with half of the driver instead of two this year. They were having one driver who sometimes delivers but often screws it, and one driver who never really delivers.Bottas doesn't really need to fulfill the expectations in 100% to make better than this. All what he needs is not to turn out as a total failure.

Yes and they (Raikkonen and Alonso by the post you replied) happen to be the two best drivers in the world.

You know there were several people exactly like you in this very forum when Raikkonen AND, mind you, Button first entered to sport. They apparently NEVER should have been allowed to drive a Formula One car as apparently they were too experienced and were either going to get themselves or some other guys killed. Your stance for all intents and purposes seems to be, that all the Formula One drivers should first enter into Formula One in their THIRD season in Formula One. Sorry, but physics and laws of nature do not work that way.

You know there were several people exactly like you in this very forum when Raikkonen AND, mind you, Button first entered to sport. They apparently NEVER should have been allowed to drive a Formula One car as apparently they were too experienced and were either going to get themselves or some other guys killed. Your stance for all intents and purposes seems to be, that all the Formula One drivers should first enter into Formula One in their THIRD season in Formula One. Sorry, but physics and laws of nature do not work that way.

I just don't see any upside in not having participated in any race for 18 months by the time Melbourne rolls around.

That's the big difference between Raikkonen, Alonso, and Button, when compared to Bottas. They didn't sit out of actual race situations for a year and a half before being put back into one.

I just don't see any upside in not having participated in any race for 18 months by the time Melbourne rolls around.

That's the big difference between Raikkonen, Alonso, and Button, when compared to Bottas. They didn't sit out of actual race situations for a year and a half before being put back into one.

He'll find his grove within a couple of races. These guys have been doing this all their lives practically, since before they were teenagers. You don't forget it by sitting out for a couple of years. On the flip side, no amount of active racing is going to cure any fundamental deficits either.